


The Greatest Treasure of Their House

by 2ndA



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Established Relationship, Holidays, M/M, YAGKYAS, too cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:04:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ndA/pseuds/2ndA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>quick fill for a YAGKYAS Good Cookies prompt: "Brad likes to leave Nate sweet little presents, but he hides them in a way that only a top notch Recon Marine can find. With a compass. And NVGs. And, most likely, a multitool."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Greatest Treasure of Their House

**Author's Note:**

  * For [accol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/accol/gifts).



 

_"The holiest of holidays are...the secret anniversaries of the heart"_

 

Their first year together, Brad and Nate agree not to buy each other presents. After all, they are grown men with full-time salaries: anything they want, they could buy for themselves.

“Besides, you should be saving your pennies,” Brad insists as Nate wrapped up most of Toys-R-Us. “If your sisters have any more spawn, you’ll go bankrupt. Jesus, how many Barbies did you buy? I bet the cashier put you on some sort of pedophile registry.”

“My sisters? What about _your_ family?” Nate chucks a ball of wrapping paper at Brad’s head. “I may have a lot of nieces, but _you_ have eight nights of Hanukah to cover.”

“Of course, if you’re financially irresponsible enough, maybe your government will give you a bailout,” muses Brad, neatly snagging the ball out of the air.

“Uh, it’s your government, too.”

Brad groans. “Don’t remind me…” And the conversation meanders into their usual argument about what the federal government owes the national economy, and vice versa.

Nate figures the issue is settled until he returns from dropping Brad off at Reagan National for his flight to California. He and Brad have been doing the long distance thing for months now, but the apartment always seems bigger and emptier for a few days after Brad leaves. Nate actually turns on the TV for company, clicking through news stations until he finds a channel playing some holiday movie. It’s only then that he notices the message on his answering machine. The landline comes packaged with Nate’s internet service, but everyone who actually wants to talk calls his cell, so Nate is surprised to hear Brad’s voice.

“Nate, this is Brad, checking in. Interrogative: can you confirm your receipt of initial target designator? Let me know when you’ve captured that. Out.”

Nate replays the message. In the background, he can hear airport chatter: “…is the final boarding call for United 1138, flight to Denver…Pullbright, party of two, please…”. Brad must have called as soon as he got through airport security, maybe thirty minutes after Nate had dropped him off. (“You don’t need to hold my hand all the way to Departures,” Brad had insisted, because he always got a little gruff during leave-takings. “I’m not _that_ gay.” Nate, whose mouth was still tingling from an absolutely filthy goodbye kiss, hadn’t bothered to disagree.)

30,000 feet up, Brad won’t have access to his cellphone for at least five hours. Nate sends an email instead, subject line _I don’t copy say again?_ He wanders around the apartment for another fifteen minutes, shuffling paperwork, unable to settle down to any particular task, before giving up and going to bed. As he always does the night after Brad leaves, he shifts to the left side, where the pillow still smells a little like Brad. Tonight, it crackles under his head. Nate slides a hand into the pillowcase and comes out with a sheet of notebook paper. On it, in Brad’s geometric handwriting, are GPS coordinates

 

++++

The coordinates correspond to a distant, overgrown section of Rock Creek Park and, of course, it’s blowing a fucking gale. Silver lining, Nate thinks, as he slogs through muddy undergrowth: he should be glad Brad’s dive gear was still in California or he’d probably be spending his Saturday in the Potomac.  
  
“Consider it a skills test, sir,” Brad had explained when Nate finally got him on the phone. “I mean, I could have just put it under your raggedy-ass Charlie Brown Christmas twig, but where’s the challenge in that?”  
  
“Easy to talk about challenge when you’re sitting in your mother’s kitchen, eating latkes!”  
  
“Why, yes,” Brad said with his mouth full. “Yes, it is.” He swallowed. “Oh, hey, don’t forget to bring a compass—that fucking POG GPS of yours is only accurate to within a few meters.”  
  
With a compass, the GPS, the relevant geological survey maps, and a chart listing when the sun will rise and set in DC in December, Nate finds a little Tupperware box suspended from a tree branch twenty feet above the ground. Inside is a tiny key, a pair of socks, and a note taped to a Starbucks gift card. _USNOAA predicts rain all week_ , says the note, _Get something hot to drink and don’t be stubborn about the snivel gear_. It takes Nate forty-five minutes to get close enough to civilization to find a Starbucks, a guilty pleasure he's evidently failed to keep hidden from Brad. He changes into the dry socks and buys the most adulterated ‘holiday coffee drink’ on the menu. With extra whipped cream. Then he calls Brad to tell him all about it.  
  
“You left me a key,” he says when Brad picks up. “You must not have a whole lot of faith in my problem-solving abilities.”  
  
“Almost none,” Brad confirms. “I mean, it’s not like you got us all the way across Babylon or anything.”  
  
“I had some help with that,” Nate says. He runs his thumb across the key-chain, a blindingly pink neon plastic heart that reminds him _Someone in California Loves You!_ It may be a re-gift from Ray. He listens to Brad’s breathing from all the way across the country. They’re both grown men with full-time salaries. They have neither kids nor particularly strong religious feelings. Their holidays are not imbued with any required traditions or childish magic. But suddenly, keenly, Nate wishes Brad were here, sitting across from him and complaining about the shitty holiday elevator music. “So, where does the key go?” he asks finally.  
  
“Oh, Annie and Dom agreed to hold your Christmas present for me. My mom always hid birthday presents and stuff in the china cupboard, and you don’t have one. But Annie does.”  
  
Nate is confused. “Annie and Dom upstairs?”  
  
“Mmhmm.”  
  
“Brad, Annie and Dom are in Quebec visiting his parents until the new year, remember? How am I supposed to get in?”  
  
“Well, shit,” says Brad mildly. “If only the US military-industrial complex had spent thousands of tax-payer dollars training you in reconnaissance and close operations…”  
  
“Brad, I am _NOT_ breaking into Annie and Dom’s apartment.”  
  
“What’s a little B &E among friends? And just so you know, if you sweet-talk the condo people into letting you in the front door, I will consider it a personal affront to my warrior spirit.”  
  
“There is _no way_ —”  
  
“If I’d known you were going to be such a pussy about it, I would have shipped the damn thing FedEx.”  
  
Nate spent a lot of time listening to Brad on comms; he recognizes the faint edge of amusement in the don’t-care tone. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”  
  
“Hey, my family hasn’t let me hide the afikomen in, like,  _four_ Passovers. I’m going through withdrawal.”  
  
Nate sighs. “I hope someone in California loves me enough to bail me out of jail…”

 

++++

Nate had an instructor at bootcamp who advised his charges to go up and over whatever obstacles they couldn’t go through. Annie and Dom have the condo one floor above and two units over, at the back of the building. So when it gets dark enough, Nate pulls his car into the alley on the east side of the building and climbs from the top of his car to the fire escape. The scramble from the fire escape to the roof is a lot more precarious than it should be, and Nate makes an early New Year’s resolution about spending more time at the gym. Then across the roof, and down to balance with one foot on the kitchen windowsill and the other on the air conditioning unit that Dom leaves up all year ‘round. He’s made a sort of rappel/fast rope affair with stuff from the Home Depot, so it’s a little like urban assault training, except for the freezing rain (NOAA hadn’t been joking) and the very real possibility of being arrested.  
  
Nate had watched a lot of YouTube videos about lockpicking, because DC is not Baghdad and he can’t exactly kick in his neighbors' windows. It looks easier than it actually is: a split-second after he feels the subtle click of the tumblers aligning, his pliers slip from his sodden gloves, clang off someone’s balcony, and end up in the shrubbery. Once he’s actually inside the unit, he turns on his headlamp and turns off the alarm. (He has the password from the time he got dragooned into cat-sitting and he wonders if Brad took that into account, if he’s been planning this since Labor Day weekend). He moves quickly and silently toward the china cabinet Annie inherited from her Auntie Virginia. (He, Brad, and Dom had muscled the thing in from the moving truck in the summer heat, and is it possible that Brad has been planning this since June?!).  
  
Nate calls one last time, sitting on the floor of his friends’ condo, surrounded by tissue paper and ribbon. The present in front of him makes him think Brad has been planning this for more than a few months; Brad must’ve paying careful attention to Nate for _years_.  
  
“It’s perfect,” he begins as soon as Brad answers the phone. “I don’t—how did you even think of…I thought we weren’t doing presents.”  
  
“Yeah, tell that to my mom—who loves the gift basket, by the way. Or my sisters, and I know you must’ve gotten advice from  _your_ sisters, because how else could a man have come up with that idea? Also, my ever-increasing flock of nieces and nephews: I definitely have more Barbie dolls than I should, and the football thing has elevated me to most-favored-uncle status.”  
  
“Oh, that wasn’t anything spec—”  
  
“Sorry, I can’t hear you: I think my eardrums have been permanently damaged by Person squealing about whatever holiday shit you shipped to Ass-end, Kentucky. At Pappy’s, he and Poke's wife were comparing notes like teenaged girls.” Brad interrupts. And then, quieter, “Anyway, I’m glad you like it. It's just..,you always think of everyone else, which is funny cause you couldn’t give a good goddamn about owning stuff—I swear your parents should’ve bought you more big, plastic toys when you were a kid, you suck at capitalism—and I …well, I was thinking of you.” Brad clears his throat. “As I usually am, whatever fucking day it is.”  
  
Nate knows he is going to have to get Annie and Dom’s place squared away, reset the alarm, return to his apartment, get ready to drive to Maryland for Christmas Eve dinner. But he takes another minute to sit with Brad’s present in his hands and Brad’s voice in his ear. And then he says, “So, uh. I got you something too. You should be able to get it in eight nights, but you'll need a good flashlight, batteries, cold-weather gear, and possibly your Ka-bar…”

**Author's Note:**

> epigraph from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


End file.
